hanging by a string
by fabled wings
Summary: Set between 121 and 122. Merag takes a last trip back to the human world—she means to let go, only to unravel a final string that tugs at her.


**Title:** hanging by a string  
**Characters/Pairing:** Merag-Kamishiro Rio, Thomas Arclight  
**Rating:** K+  
**Words:** 2,234  
**Summary:** Set between 121 and 122. Merag takes a last trip back to the human world—she means to let go, only to unravel a final string that tugs at her._  
_**Warnings:** Spoilers for everything.**  
A/N: **I really love what we have so far of Nasch and Merag's Barian forms, but seriously I hope the latter will have a chance to Do Something.

* * *

Kamishiro Rio used to sneak back home via the window to their sixth-floor apartment, at first when she forgets the key, and after the addition of a spare just for the thrill of it; her muscles still retain the memory of shimmying up the pipes and ledges, even though Merag tells herself there's no way she should know of the spare key under the potted plant at the entrance, and thus should have no familiarity with every grip and heave. She pushes such thoughts out of her mind as her limbs reach the sill shrouded by light blue curtains and wrenches the window open.

Once her feet are planted firmly in the room, she's bowled over by the sight of the frames on the dresser, photographs within them that depict a pair of twins through their years—there's Ryoga and Rio showing off their rings, the former with a bored expression and the latter grinning widely; a portrait of both of them lifting Ryoga's first trophy won as a duelist; a few years on, she's snapping a picture with a wide grin and Ryoga pulled to her side, he hadn't been expecting it by the looks of his open-mouthed shock; they were at the amusement park, she remembers, and Ryoga had then spilled half of the popcorn in his hand, out of shot, and had been sulky the rest of the day because of that—

Merag laughs at the memory; the picture frame then slips from her fingers and crashes upon the floor by her feet. She doesn't even realise the tears welling in her eyes until they fall upon the picture frame as she bends to pick it up, and she careless wipes her eyes and cheeks against her sleeves, staining them wet. She can't—she _won't_ let these memories have a place in her heart. Not anymore.

She slams it face-down with forceful fingers, doing the same to the others and sending plumes of dust up in the stale air, so the photographs themselves never have to stare back at her; she ignores the wetness that continue to stream down even as the last one is slammed down, a candid shot with the Numbers Club taken on the school rooftop. Kamishiro Rio, Kamishiro Ryoga, they were no more; there are only Nasch and Merag, two of the Barian Lords.

Merag sweeps an eye across Kamishiro Rio's room, before making for the door; it's all but wrenched open, and she storms out, when she crashes into a body. A somebody who stumbles back at the impact and stares down at her under a head of mussed blond and red.

"… I heard noises, but I wasn't sure if…" IV says in a sleepy voice, which suits the ambience of the otherwise vacant apartment, dimly lit by the beams of dusk light that finds its way in through whatever gaps in the curtains that haven't been drawn with Ryoga's negligence. Magenta eyes are wide, slowly absorbing the sight in front of them; Merag instantly regrets returning the gaze with his next words. "Are you crying?"

She should shove him away, get away from his line of sight, but instead arms lift up to rub at her face again, confirming his query. Merag continues doing so despite his further questions—only when he calls her "Oy, Rio!" does she snap.

"I'm not!" And it's the answer to both the question and the name, but she doubts he knows that. She smacks away the arms that try to hold onto her shoulders, turns her gaze to the side to avoid seeing the expression in the other's. "Leave."

It comes out less commanding than she would have preferred, and doesn't have any strength behind it when she's choking back on sobs; she laments her weakness, unable to shake off attachments. The first step back into this apartment was already a fatal mistake, she should have realised that—and it seems that the more her sleeves got wet, the more her eyes were willing to provide.

She hates when others see her cry, when she had been chided so much for it as a kid; she hates when it turns into all-out bawling, she hates that when it happens for the first time in years it's in front of IV, who she knows has been visiting her in hospital in secret, in the past and in the present, who must have been so wrapped up in his guilt that he doesn't know how to answer to her—

How is she going to answer to him?

She's an ugly sight, Merag think, face a sniffling mess of snot and tears, because the most painful memory of Kamishiro Rio stands before her and—what can she say to him? IV, who must have been afraid yet still pushes that aside to reach out to her and her brother, IV who has been working and fighting for them to make up for all his mistakes, even with his entire life on the line…

She doesn't even notice that he had caught her in a one-armed embrace until her shoulders stop shaking, and she shoves at his chest with both arms, turning her back to him. IV takes the chance to place a hand upon her shoulder—it doesn't have any force behind it, but the intent keeps her rooted, tenses her up. Merag only makes a half-hearted attempt at shrugging it off.

"I don't know what's happened, why you're here and not in hospital, or why Ryoga's gone—I panicked when I saw you weren't in your bed, I thought—" his hold slips a little, "I didn't know what to think."

"Then… then don't," Merag whispers, her breath shaky. "Don't think of Rio. Or Ryoga."

"How do you expect me to do that, _huh_?" His voice cracks at the last syllable; Merag squeezes her eyes shut just as his hand leaves. "Just forget the conscience that tormented me with its whispers, for letting you and Ryoga suffer for so long, just forget all this _hurt_ we've been battling… Rio, just what…"

Her eyes sting, sting from dried tears and more that threaten to escape. She finds herself missing the support the touch of his hand had given. "You don't owe us. Them. Isn't it… enough, already…"

"It never will be. Not until the day I die."

"Don't say that so easily!" The tranquil of the apartment is shattered by her outburst, sparked the unravelling of a spell. She lowers her voice. "What if you find out, that all you've been fighting for is wrong?"

She hears IV huff behind her, can almost picture the hands upon his hips. "I came here because I thought, no matter where you go, you'll come back here. I… don't know about being right or wrong, but I believed in it. That's the only thing that mattered."

"What if all you've believed in was never what it seemed? What then?"

IV stays silent. A minute passes, another. She should have made the move to leave. A moment more in this place is a moment more pain, pain that should have been numbed by the ice cold crystal lodged within her chest—it was meant to be a protective barrier, not a brittle shard that cracked with the agitation of memories, for someone to thaw it with a single vibration of their voice.

"My name is Merag," she finally says after a deep breath. "One of the seven Barian Lords."

The information, once it leaves her lips, seems more directed at herself, instead of informing IV as per her intention; it sounded more like an affirmation than anything, and she hates, that she hadn't had such intimate experiences with her past memories as her brother did and the boundary between the two souls remained seamless and undefined, conflicting as one current crashing against another. The one unchangeable variable is her brother, the one constant in her memories; where he went, she would follow, as Nasch is the leader who now holds the fate of thousands of souls within his hands and requires her support, more than anything… it didn't make anything less difficult, that she isn't who she had known for fourteen years.

"Guess that answers where Ryoga is too… You don't look like one, however, when you're like this," he murmurs, and whether it was said in disbelief or not, she knows it's more than the human skin that coats her. She thinks it laughable that he needs no effort to chain her down like this, by just being _him_ and all of his infuriating being. "But look at me, won't you?"

Merag swipes a knuckle over her nose. She couldn't give in, but if she couldn't overcome IV, what's to say about everything else Kamishiro Rio used to be? That identity, meant to have been thrown away when she resumed her position as a soldier of the Barian World; Merag angles herself, just enough to glimpse a bracelet—she pauses a little to admire the way it glinted in the waning light—and then lets her eyes travel up the creased sleeve and rumpled collar, to a confused and pained gaze, that holds within too much sincerity she feels she's going to hurl.

"There's a reason you came back here," IV rambles on, "… it's all been real. All of it. No matter who you are," and the intensity of his eyes creases them at the corners, creases where the scar intersects; the burning sensation of his arm around her shoulders, an anchor amongst searing heat revives itself and she thinks she might fall apart with the overwhelming certainty of that past, as real as that of blinding headlights that took the lives of her parents, as true as that of the prophetess that gave her life for her people, as a queen fighting to salvage her deteriorating world.

The next instance her back hits something solid, and she finds herself supported—no, cradled in his arms; the exhaustion of everything happening so quickly and the barrage of memories from incarnation upon incarnation catching up to her, and it's all Merag can do to clutch at the fabric of his outfit in her light-headedness while she straightens her knees, and this time she's tired of using her strength to pull away. The verity in his words is accentuated amidst the odour of sweat rolling off him, intermingling with the salty scent of her drying tears.

"You're horrible," Merag whispers, and smacks at his chest with lackadaisical vehemence. "Always dragging others down to your level."

"I never thought myself a gentleman," he has the nerve to laugh, and she smacks him a second time for good measure, backed with more force. "Rock bottom feels better when you're not alone, though."

She's glad the sun descends then, plunging the apartment into darkness before IV notices the tears rolling down her cheeks freely once again. IV is warm, and his arms are firm as she remembers, and she could have stayed on leaning against his chest, and pretend for a few moments that there isn't an inter-dimensional war raging around them and that she isn't trapped within its midst; but she—not just her, they all had to put the big picture in priority, especially when her soft, fragile skin is replaced by the firm minerals and diamonds of the world where her duty called. Merag is instantly a burden on IV, if his grunt is any indication, so she backs away, in sickening reluctance, into the middle of the hallway—she would have smiled if she had a mouth, a bitter one that trembled at the edges, as this form forbade the expression of crying.

She takes in the sight of the apartment, one last time—she wishes for it to stay locked within time, for dust to cake upon every inch of furniture and steal them all away if she doesn't have the power to destroy any evidence that the Kamishiro twins once existed, to leave it all behind. She hears IV suck in a breath at the change that engulfs her, and if he had any questions, he doesn't pursue them, for which she's inwardly grateful.

Merag lifts a palm to her chest, imagines a layer of frost around her crystal heart, as if it would help make the final departure from this identity easier; she wills for resoluteness as the Overlay Network reveals itself behind her; the glow is just enough to illuminate the surprise in IV's eyes that take in her as not Rio, but the Barian Merag. "My mission is with my brother, and the Barian World."

He has a hand that seems to want to extend to her, the last sight she sees before she's whisked back to where she now regards as home, the world that is desperate for the strength she and her brother are to provide, and tries not to think of the possible circumstances in which their next meeting will be. Nasch gives her a glance that may have been meaningful, but he doesn't say anything, and not for the first time Merag is glad for the wicked, emotionless façade of this form.

It remains unknown to her, but if she had lingered, just a little longer, she would have heard his voice, one last burst at getting through to her.

"_But what about yourself?_"


End file.
